Category Archives: “Take Five” Q&A

Take Five With Timothy Hollingsworth, the New Chef De Cuisine at the French Laundry

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The French Laundry's new chef de cuisine. (Photo courtesy of the French Laundry)

Placerville, Calif.-native Timothy Hollingsworth may have grown up surfing the waves at Bolinas and Ocean beaches. But now, the self-taught chef is in for the ride of his life on a veritable culinary tsunami as the new chef de cuisine of the one and only French Laundry in Yountville.

The esteemed restaurant, which has won every accolade imaginable, just celebrated its 15h anniversary last month, too. Hollingsworth, who has been with the French Laundry for seven years, stepped into the top toque role this month with the departure of predecessor Corey Lee, who left to open his own restaurant.

If the 29-year-old Hollingsworth is feeling the weight of that responsibility pressing on his young shoulders, he’s not letting on. Hollingsworth, who learned his craft apprenticing in celebrated European kitchens, including one manned by bad-boy chef, Gordon Ramsay, is used to being under pressure. Earlier this year, he competed in the prestigious Bocuse d’Or, the Olympics of cooking, where he placed sixth out of 24 chef teams from around the globe.

The esteemed French Laundry in Yountville. (Photo courtesy of Deborah Jones)

During a recent hiatus before resuming work at the French Laundry, Hollingsworth was kind enough to do an interview via email.

Normally, I prefer conducting interviews in person or over the phone, because it’s more difficult for someone to sidestep questions once you have them engaged in conversation. What kind of questions, you wonder? Oh, ones such as “Timothy, did Gordon Ramsay ever call you a ‘stupid donkey’ when you worked for him?’ ” (No comment.) And “Will you be in charge of cooking the dinner for the wedding of Thomas Keller and Laura Cunningham?” (No comment.)

Oh well, you have to give a Food Gal credit for trying, right?

Here’s what he did answer:

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Take Five With Go Fish Chef Stuart Morris, A “Master Sommelier” of Sake

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Sous Chef Stuart Morris with one of his favorite sakes. (Photo courtesy of Go Fish restaurant)

Place a glass of wine and a glass of sake in front of Stuart Morris, sous chef of Go Fish restaurant in St.Helena, and there’s no question which beverage he’d reach for.

Sake.

Without a doubt.

The Japanese wine that’s brewed from finely milled rice has long captured the imagination of this 36-year-old Boston native who attended Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, and Le Cordon Bleu in London.

So much so that the former cook at Postrio in San Francisco and La Toque in the Napa Valley, put put himself through the arduous task of earning the title of KikiSakeShi. What “Master Sommelier” is to wine, KikiSakeShi is to sake.

Although the Sake Service Institute in Japan, which administers the rigorous exam, doesn’t keep records by nationality, Morris is believed to be only the sixth American to garner this distinction.

To showcase his talents with sake, Go Fish is now featuring a $55 three-course sake pairing dinner on Tuesday nights. Morris, who has been with Go Fish since the restaurant opened three years ago, designs the dishes and picks the sakes each week. The restaurant boasts an impressive 27 different sakes by the bottle, and eight by the glass, including a few that aren’t normally found at restaurants in the United States.

Recently, I had a chance to chat with him about why he loves sake, and just how incredibly involved the process was to get this rare certification.

Q: So how does one go about getting a KikiSakeShi title?

A: You apply and get sent materials. You have to prep for it. I got four really thick books in Japanese and one very thin book in English.

Q: Oh my. Do you even read Japanese?

A: No. (laughs)

I worked with some of my Japanese friends to help translate the materials. I also went online and got as much information as I could. It took a year for me to go to Tokyo to take the test after I first got all the books.

Sake cups (Photo courtesy of Go Fish restaurant)

Q: When did you take the test?

A: I was in Tokyo at the end of March for 10 days. The test takes place on one day for eight hours. I arrived on a Friday night, and Saturday, I had to actually go to the place to take the test.

I walked down a street and kind of got lost. Since there is usually a police station near the train station, I stopped a policeman to ask for directions. I had the address written on a piece of paper. He started pointing and writing more directions on the paper. I got a few more blocks before I had to ask someone else for more directions, who also wrote more instructions on the paper. All in all, I had to ask 10 people for directions until I got to where I was supposed to be.

Q: Were you the only Caucasian taking the test?

A: There were 15 people taking it, and yes, I was the only non-Japanese person.

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Take Five With Poleng Lounge Chef Tim Luym — Or “Mosquito” To Those In the Know

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Chef Tim Luym in his shoebox-sized kitchen at Poleng Lounge.

For awhile, it looked like the inside of a tiny cubicle was where Tim Luym would make his mark.

After all, the 30-year-old Filipino-American had majored in marketing and programming at Santa Clara University, before going to work at nearby Applied Materials.

But seeing the movie,” Office Space,” the comedy satirizing workers who loathe their three-walled existences, changed all that. Luym saw his life flash before him. He realized it was not a life he wanted. So he decided to turn his back on that, and follow his heart — and stomach — by enrolling at San Francisco’s California Culinary Academy instead.

An externship landed him at Charles Nob Hill in San Francisco, where he cooked on the line with acclaimed Chef Melissa Perello. When she moved to the Fifth Floor in San Francisco, he followed her.

In 2006, Lyum and a group of investors — none of whom had ever operated a restaurant before — got together to open what was supposed to be a lively night club that merely served a little bit of food.

Papaya salad with sugarcane shrimp.

That place was Poleng Lounge, which nowadays has become known far and wide for Luym’s vibrant, daring take on modern Southeast Asian street food in dishes such as bone marrow with crispy coconut bread, and addicting crispy adobo wings.

Recently, I chatted with him about his quirky nickname, the enormous impact a three-star review from the San Francisco Chronicle can have on a fledgling restaurant, and how he’d like to reintroduce Chris Cosentino to a certain Filipino delicacy the Incanto chef once gagged on.

Q: So when Poleng Lounge opened, it was really envisioned to be a club, not necessarily a restaurant?

A: The whole concept was that it was a club. We had to serve food because of the liquor license. We were an Asian-themed bar, so it was only natural that we did Asian bar food. We opened with a menu of only seven items.

Some nights we only had seven people come in. I would go to the market every morning, and figure out how much to buy, based on how many people we thought might walk in. After awhile, we realized there was no way we could sustain ourselves at the pace we were going. We opened in May, and we realized in August that we were probably going to be closed by December. We would run out of cash flow.

Then, out of left field, we got three stars in the Chronicle. I was just the cook. I didn’t know about media and all that stuff. I didn’t grasp what it meant. When the review came out, a public relations agency told us, ‘You better get ready. You’re going to be busy!’

On a weekend, we were used to doing maybe 20 covers. That Sunday night after the review came out, we quadrupled in business. We had all kinds of people come in — young, old, and people who had traveled from all over the Bay Area. It was shocking, and a blessing. To this day, I don’t understand it. I know a lot of talented chefs and can’t figure out, ‘Why us?’

Q: When Poleng Lounge first opened, you weren’t even able to pay yourself a salary. So you ended up cooking on the side for the dental fraternity at the University of California at San Francisco to earn extra cash?

A: That was my income while opening the restaurant. It was a means to an end. About 20 people lived in the house. I did this for a year and a half. I’d do themed nights. When it was “Mediterranean Night,” I’d make couscous with lamb or beef, and Greek salad with feta. When it was “Italian Night,” I’d make Caesar salad, linguine vongole, and tiramisu. Some of them had never had this kind of food before. It was all stuff that I liked to eat.

Once the restaurant got busy, though, I had less time. I started having to repeat menus. The worst was when I did a Macy’s cooking challenge. I was so busy that I called a pizza place to deliver to the fraternity. But I must have given the wrong address, because the pizza never showed up. The next day, they were like, ‘Man, we have to talk!’ And I knew I couldn’t do it any longer.

Q: So, being Asian myself, I must ask you the infamous Asian parental question. Did your parents think you were crazy when, after graduating from an expensive, private university and landing a job in high-tech, you told them you wanted to become a cook instead?

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Take Five with Roy Fong — Educator, Importer, and Connoisseur of Fine Teas

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Top quality jasmine tea leaves.

Nobody knows tea quite like Roy Fong.

The 53-year-old entrepreneur opened the first traditional Chinese tea house in San Francisco in 1992. Now, he overseas two Imperial Tea Court locations in the Bay Area — one in Berkeley, and the other in San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

A visit back to his native Hong Kong when he was in his 20s, changed his life. As he wandered around the old tea district there, he knew he had found his destiny. Now, he sells about 300 types and grades of teas, priced at $16 to $480 a pound.

Roy Fong enjoying the fruits of his labor.

His two tea houses also are thought to be the only restaurants in the Bay Area that feature an all-organic, sustainable dim sum menu.

With the exception of a few sauces, everything else on the menu is organic and sustainable. The flour used to make the wrappers and the tea oil used to fry the green onion pancakes are organic. The shrimp is wild. The pork is family-raised and sustainable. Even the tea leaves used to flavor the broth for the won ton soup are organic.

Read more about Fong’s organic dim sum — and other purveyers jumping on that bandwagon — in my story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle Food section.

I had the chance to sit down to lunch with Fong recently at his Berkeley tea house. He poured cups of jasmine tea, the favorite variety of Northern Chinese.

Dumplings made with wild shrimp, organic flour, and organic jasmine tea leaves.

Before pouring water over the rolled-up leaves, he had me take a whiff. The aroma was very floral. It was an indication that the green tea picked in early spring was quite fresh, because jasmine tea takes on a more citrusy fragrance as it ages. Surprise your guests at your next party by pairing jasmine tea with brie cheese. Fong says the two are an exceptional match.

Q: You’ve won quite a loyal following for your organic dim sum, haven’t you?

A: People drive hundreds of miles for it. We have regulars who come from Monterey for lunch all the time.

Q: The wrappers on the shrimp dumplings are so incredibly translucent. How do you do that?

A: You have to control the water temperature, and roll the dough very thin. The water can’t be too warm or too cold.

Q: I’m guessing you won’t tell me the exact temperature?

A: Nope. (laughs)

Noodles being pulled to order.

Q: What’s the most popular dish here?

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Take Five with Peninsula Chef-Restaurateur Jesse Cool, On Three Decades of Championing Organic Food

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Jesse Cool in her organic garden in Palo Alto. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Cool)

Long before it was popular, Peninsula chef-restaurateur Jesse Cool served organic food. Back then, it wasn’t what most diners wanted to eat. They certainly didn’t want to pay extra for it, either.

How the culinary landscape has changed. And Cool couldn’t be more pleased.

Despite hard times for so many restaurateurs now, Cool is coming off her busiest year ever in 2008. There’s more to come, too.

June 7, she’ll host “Dirt to Dining,” a benefit held at her Palo Alto home for the Ecological Farming Association. Spend an afternoon enjoying appetizers, mingling with organic farmers and vintners, and learning about organic gardening and pest control. There also will be a silent auction.

Price is $25 for the garden tour alone; $75 for the organic food and wine tasting if purchased by May 29 ($100 at the door). For information, call (650) 854-1226.

Additionally, Cool just closed her 10-year-old jZCool Eatery in downtown Menlo Park. She is moving her CoolEatz Catering to a larger site in the Menlo Business Park in East Menlo Park. In June, a new organic lunch cafe will open there, as well.

Pasture-raised chutney chicken salad sandwich at the Cool Cafe.

The business park also happens to be where she held her 60th birthday party earlier this year. I sat down with her over lunch at her Cool Cafe inside the Cantor Arts Center in Palo Alto to dish about how her interest in local and sustainable food came about, what she’s most proud of, and whether 60 is indeed the new 40.

Q: You’re the hippest 60-year-old around. How do you do it?

A: I am who I am. I think it’s more organic to be real about your age. I attribute it to exercise, attitude, and eating real good food. It does make a difference.

Q: This is the chicken-and-egg question: Who was the first organics pioneer in the Bay Area — you or Alice Waters?

A: We both were. In the beginning, I was into organics and chemical-free. That spilled into sourcing locally.

In the beginning, Alice was into small, local, and artisan. We were both ingredient-driven.

Q: Back in the day, organic food was a hard sell, wasn’t it?

A: It was when I started with Late for the Train in Menlo Park in 1976 and Flea St. Cafe in Menlo Park in 1980. Back then, I couldn’t put organic on the menu without people thinking it was hippy-dippy, that it was unwashed and unsanitary, which it wasn’t.

Being in the South Bay made it even harder. Just try getting product down here back then. The trucks stopped at San Francisco and Berkeley. I had to go pick up from Niman Ranch, myself.

The cool thing is it’s mainstream now. Food is finally connected to personal, long-term well-being.

Balsamic beet salad with Pt. Reyes blue cheese.

Q: What’s your business philosophy?

A: That the customer comes last. Always.

Q: Really?

A: I decided to do organics for my staff, so they wouldn’t have to wash this stuff off the produce. I didn’t want my staff or the farmers around chemicals. We figured if we took care of our staff and the farmers, that it would spill over to the customers.

Q: You faced some real challenges early on?

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